Bipolar: Crazy Mermaid's Blog

The Lexus and Financial Ruin February 27, 2011

In the early stages of my psychotic break from reality, I believed that Bill and Melinda Gates were good friends of mine.  Hanging on my every word (via ESP), they willingly financed my needs and wants.  They even offered me a job working for their foundation (via ESP), which I accepted.

Part of my compensation package for working at their foundation, I believed, was a new car.  They told me (via ESP) to go find a car that I wanted, and that they would reimburse me for it.

As I walked onto the  Lexus dealership car lot, I met a salesman who said he had many Microsoft employees as clients. He alluded to the fact that the Gates’ had a “tab” there, so it was natural for me to be reimbursed for my purchase.

When he asked me what I was looking for, I pointed to his gold ring and told him I was looking for a car that color.  (Note: I know very little about cars). Taking in my appearance (I was all in gold), he smiled. “A gold car for a gold lady?” he asked. I nodded.

He walked me to the only gold car in a sea of silver, which happened to be a Lexus convertible coupe.  At $55,000, the used car was a bargain, he said.   He offered to take me for a ride in the car, and we rushed down the freeway, top open. Pulling off at a little park, we changed seats. Upon our return, I told him I would take the car.

The salesman brought me to the finance department, where we discussed my payment method. With assurances (via ESP) from Bill Gates that he would cover my check, I wrote a $55,000 check without sufficient funds to pay for the car. 

After the deal was done, the salesman offered to meet me at a nearby restaurant to buy me lunch. As we sat eating fish and chips and clam chowder, I told him that I was a Mermaid, and so was he (actually, a Merman).  He didn’t seem surprised at my revelation.  He said he was getting ready to buy a house, and asked for advice.  I explained that as a Merman, he needed a place close to the water and that he needed to swim daily.  He was gratified at my advice, thanking me for his new-found knowledge of his Merman status.

As I returned  home with my new car, I noted that my husband was on the roof, installing some trim on a new window. Not bothering to tell him about the new car, I left the paperwork and keys on the kitchen counter, and took the dog for a walk.

Coming down from the roof to get a drink of water a few minutes later, he saw the paperwork sitting on the counter, and realized that the new car sitting in front of the driveway, which he assumed belonged to a neighbor, was actually his.

Shocked and dismayed, he confronted me with the purchase, insisting that we return the car that very second. Unwillingly, I rode with him back to the dealership, pissed. He disappeared into the building while I sat outside in my new car.  A little while later, he returned to the car, telling me to get out as he had just returned it.  We drove home in my old broken-down pickup truck in silence.

To his credit, my husband performed a small miracle. Despite the fact that there’s no three day grace period for car purchases, he managed to convince the dealership to allow him to return the $55,000 Lexus Convertible – paid for with a “hot” check- within hours of it hitting our driveway.  

That was just one incident among many. My husband went through Hell for weeks, watching helplessly as I continued to bring home purchase after purchase, wondering what I was going to do next. He could only watch as I went through tens of thousands of dollars in a very short period of time.

Finally, I was involuntarily committed to a mental hospital, giving my husband some breathing room to do damage control. Enlisting my mom and sister’s help, they piled all of the clothes and shoes in a big heap on the living room floor, spending hours painstakingly matching merchandise to receipts, then heading to the mall to return everything they could. They looked for, but couldn’t find, a $500 ring and a $300 pendant, never guessing in a million years that they were at the beach, in a hole I had dug while wading around in 2 feet of water.

Damage control underway, my husband turned his attention to the bigger picture.  My purse in his possession, he tore up all my credit cards. He flagged our credit to prevent me from opening another account without his knowledge. And, reaching beyond his legal limit, he –without my permission or knowledge- closed all of our credit and bank accounts, opening new ones that I had no access to or even knowledge of.

Coming out of the mania, I was ashamed and embarrassed at my conduct, even though my husband took pains to explain that the financial train wreck was, like my tremendous medical bills, another cost of my mental illness. He refused to consider my actions an act of moral bankruptcy.

I could do nothing to atone for my sins except put in place as much protection (from myself) as possible in case I again became manic. In the end, I realized that it came down to eliminating my access to all of our accounts. I have no credit cards. I don’t know what our bank account numbers are or what our bank balance is. In fact, I know nothing about our finances. My husband dispenses cash to me- me, a professional woman who made over $100K a year. And that’s the way it has to be.